The November 19, 2002 occurred in Spainoff the coast of Galicia, one of the most serious environmental disasters in Iberian history: that of the oil tanker MC Prestigelaunched in 1975 and owned by the Mare Shipping company. The oil tanker flying the flag of Bahamaswhich set sail from St. Petersburg and was bound for Singapore, sank off the coast of Galicia, dispersing a good part of the 77,000 tons of oil which it carried, producing an “oil slick” on the Atlantic and contaminating a stretch of coastline approximately 2000 km between Portugal and the France. The wreck of the MC Prestige, now broken in half, then fell to the seabed at approximately 3600 meters deepwith a large quantity of fuel still on board.
The reconstruction of the environmental disaster of the Prestige tanker
From a technical point of view, the MC Prestige oil tanker was characterized by a single hull 243 meters long with a draft of 14 meters. The boat came launched in ’75 and, at the time of the shipwreck, it was owned by Sea Shippinga company registered at Bahamas. The November 13, 2002after sailing from the port of St. Petersburg towards Singapore, was approximately 30 miles from the northwestern coast of Spain, off the so-called Costa de la Muerte.
That afternoon, however, it happened a leak in the hull – probably due to a violent wave. The commander Apostolos Mangouras he immediately sent the request for help but the Spanish government was undecided on what to do. There were two options on the plate:
- drag the ship to the nearest portrepairing the leak and emptying the tank. This would certainly have contaminated the port area and hundreds of kilometers of neighboring coasts, but it would have averted more extensive damage on the rest of the coast;
- keep the ship as far away from the coast as possibletrying to limit oil spills offshore, in the hope that it would never reach land.
The Spanish government opted for this second choice and therefore on November 14 some tugboats towed the Prestige offshore.
In the first few days we tried to intervene to limit the fuel leakage but, unfortunately, the November 19th the irreparable happened: the ship broke in twoabout 240 km from the coast. The wreck sank, settling on the seabed at approximately 3.6 km deep and pouring into the water tens of thousands of tons of fuel. This gigantic one oil spill it reached the coasts of Spain, Portugal and France in no time, giving rise to one of the most serious environmental disasters in history.
The probable causes of the sinking of the Prestige in the Atlantic Ocean
At the moment we don’t know for sure what caused the initial leak in the hull and, considering that the wreck is almost 4 km deep, it is likely that we will never know.
However, the authorities investigated and it seems that the initial damage may actually be associated with theimpact with a strong wavecompatible with bad weather days. Obviously to create a leak it was necessary for that portion of the hull to already be weakened, and this could be linked to the coexistence of two or more of the following factors:
- Damage being loaded in St. Petersburg;
- Fatigue of the hull – i.e. weakening caused by use over time;
- Hull stress caused by a previous repair;
- Corrosion of the hull.
The consequences of the oil tanker sinking in Spain
As anticipated, they were impacted overall 2000 km of coastlineas clearly visible in the image below:
Thousands of volunteers rushed from every country to help clean up the coasts of Galicia, but the damage was already done: it is estimated that some of the 115 thousand and 230 thousand sea birdsto which countless others were added cetaceans, crustaceans And turtles.
This is related to the fact that oil is a material very dense And slightly soluble in water. This means that, first of all, there are problems a short term, linked above all to the physical presence of oil on the substrate which prevents to oxygen and to light to penetrate. Furthermore, it is fair to point out that this fuel contains various compounds of sulfur And heavy metalswhich can cause environmental damage also on the medium and long termwithout counting the biopersistence within organisms ei damage at the ecosystem level in the following decades.
But how did the story end? The word “end” was put by the Spanish court which during the trial in November 2013 declared that:
Criminal responsibility could not be established and the captain, chief engineer and former head of the Spanish merchant navy were found not guilty of crimes against the environment
